Indiana: Sen. Joe Donnelly has shown he's aware of Trump's victory in his state, appearing on stage with the president when he visited late last year. Donnelly will be up against either Rep. Luke Messer or Rep. Todd Rokita.

Exactly. Sane Republicans have jumped ship and the only ones coming in to attempt to replace them are bonafide right wing nut jobs. Sorry, but that is what they are. They are just more Tea Party types, the kind that will not compromise, the my way or the highway kind. If Democrats don't take Congress this country is in for seriously bad times ahead, IMO.

"I know that human being and fish can coexist peacefully"
--- George W Bush

Exactly. Sane Republicans have jumped ship and the only ones coming in to attempt to replace them are bonafide right wing nut jobs. Sorry, but that is what they are. They are just more Tea Party types, the kind that will not compromise, the my way or the highway kind. If Democrats don't take Congress this country is in for seriously bad times ahead, IMO.

"Tea Party" types oversimplifies something important. The real "Tea Party" types were deficit hawks on steroids. They, mostly because of a very strongly held misunderstanding of macroeconomics, thought that Obama was bankrupting America. But, they were against the black guy, so the #MAGA types (anti-government, neo-confederate, racist, xenophobic, white nationalists/supremacists etc etc) gravitated to the Tea Party and took it over.

The anti-deficit spending portion of the Tea Party is dead (the "Real Tea Party"), except for Rand Paul crying in the corner.

“I don’t look to the teachings of Jesus for what my political beliefs should be.”

FiveThirtyEight: The AP has (finally!) called Indiana for Mike Braun. The results as they stand with 61 percent reporting: Braun 41 percent, Messer 29.5 percent, Rokita 29.5 percent. We basically just witnessed a Greek tragedy in electoral form: Messer and Rokita, the initial front-runners who gave up safe congressional seats to run, were too busy slinging mud at each other to notice the third candidate sneaking up the middle to grab the prize.

As for Braun, he’ll take on Sen. Joe Donnelly, one of Democrats’ most vulnerable members, in the fall. That’s probably not what Donnelly wanted, considering all the negative stories surrounding Messer and Rokita, although Braun had his own mini-scandal as well. Braun, a wealthy businessman, can also self-fund.

I’m not quite sure what this primary result means for Trumpism in the 2018 primaries. On one hand, Rokita was the candidate who hugged the president most closely. On the other, Braun — a successful businessman (and former Democrat) who had little experience in politics — fits the Trump mold the best of any of the candidates.

As somebody who just relocated from Seattle to Indy, politics here have been a bit of culture shock. If you watch any TV you would swear that Republicans are the only people running and they're all fighting over which one is the biggest Trump supporter. It's all about building the wall, ending trade agreements and protecting "our beliefs" (which I take as code for opposition to anything LBGTQ). I've seen ads for Donnelly a few times but they're few and far between. One can only hope this will change dramatically for the general election. What I haven't looked at yet is who won the house primaries but I suspect there are a large number of FRWNJs on the list in parts of the state where a Democrat is unlikely to win.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Democratic Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly and Republican businessman Mike Braun don't agree on much. But both conceded one point Monday night, during their first debate: they support President Donald Trump.

"I go against my party all the time," Donnelly said from the debate state in Westville. "I've been with president 62 percent of the time. That's what we're supposed to do."

Unlike many Democratic campaigns across the U.S. that have been galvanized by Trump opposition, Donnelly touted his support for Trump's priorities.

That's not entirely a surprise. The vulnerable incumbent is one of a handful of Democrats running for re-election in states Trump won. But Donnelly has cast several high-profile votes against Trump and in line with Democrats, including his "no" vote this weekend on Trump's Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh and the GOP led tax cut bill. ...

But after years of Democrats running away from what had been a toxic issue at the polls, Donnelly boasted that he cast the "deciding vote" to save the health law— the same wording the GOP formerly used in attack ads.

"I stand here proudly before you and all the people of Indiana to tell you I was the deciding vote that saved coverage for preexisting conditions," Donnelly said, before attacking Braun for supporting a GOP led lawsuit aimed at eliminating the heath care law, including coverage for those with preexisting conditions.